Pastoral Ecologies and National Risks
Wendy Wilson-Fall, Lafayette College
Introduction
The issue of la d g a s i Af i a has e o e i
easi gly k o
o e the last de ade. The g oss
injustices and the political, cultural, and economic implications of the take-over of communally-held,
esse tially o po ate la ds
y pe so s fo eig to su h o
u ities a e widely understood to be a real
and serious danger to social and political stability in Africa. But what happens when there are no
corporate bodies, such as a village, cooperative, or town association, to claim disputed land? Many
actors, including central governing bodies and externally based development organizations imagine its
rolling prairies and northern deserts of the Sahelian zone to be empty, available spaces. National
go e
e ts, su h as those of Nige a d “e egal, aspi e to
ode ize o
o e t pasto al zo es,
where land tenure is signified most often through lineage ownership of inherited wells. The case of
Barkedji forest in Senegal in an example of the State as player in land re-appropriations. Livestock
herders in West Africa are often imagined to be best off in ranch-style pastoral production or as
transformed sedentary farmers who engage in limited livestock production. The evidence provided in
Scoones (1995) on the great biodiversity of pasture lands and the efficiency of opportunistic, mobile
herd management still remains largely ignored by policy makers both in the West and national
governments. Where it is not ignored, weak go e
out o thei o
Lefe
e t a d i f ast u tu e ha e left he de s to tough it
, a i po ta t fa to leadi g to the u e t situatio i
o the
Mali. Ho e e , as
e has oted, The p odu tio of spa e a d pla e is …the u e itti g a d fo e e u finished
p odu t of o peti g dis ou ses o e
hat o stitutes the
Lefe
e:
. He de dis ou se
consistently engages issues of tenure, usufruct rights, and water. But for the moment, this dialogue has
broadened due to yet other stakeholders who have imagined the lands of the Sahel and the Sahara as
passive spaces their dreams might be acted out, thus creating nightmares for local communities. These
stakeholders are the international cocaine dealers and the morbid duet of Al-Qaida and AQMI.
This paper addresses the problem of imagined empty spaces where the people who inhabit those spaces
are considered powerless and disorganized. In the view of the Arab world (at least Maghrebian), the
Sahel and southern Sahara historically represent a constructed space that is dynamic and at the same
time, administered, as e k o f o
I
Battuta s
iti gs, a o g othe s. This view of the Sahel has no
historical parallel in the Middle East, where many scouts for AQIM have come from, via Algeria or Libya.
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Neither is this view the case for the Western organizations of NATO and AFRICOM. Springer (2011)
a gues that
hile eoli e alis
p o otes the idea that it ill dissol e di e t iole e, it ofte
reinforces the structural violence that generates the very phenomenon it suggests it is attempting to
ullify. I this pape I ill dis uss this issue of iole e a d its a ied
a ifestatio s i the “ahel,
emanating from local, as well as global, historical sources, and now critically, from entwined expressions
of both.
Niger presents a useful example of these pressures. While religious fanaticism has not achieved a sure
grip within, pastoralists are menaced by forces from outside of Niger that are contending for authority
o e the pastu e zo e. While i the
sa d
s the g eatest
e a e as the shift of pe so al
herds to herds owned by sedentary, town-based entrepreneurs, since 2000 the Sahara and the Sahel
have become sites of criminal activity and religious radicalism. Herders find themselves trapped
between expanded cultivation in the southern wet zones and opportunistic occupation by drug runners
and Al-Qaida related forces to the north.
There are four major factors that are simultaneously affecting the land insecurity
occurring in the Sahelian and Savannah zones of West Africa. They are:
the current sustainability challenges to nomadic pastoralism being experienced
by the populations of this zone;
the conditions of weak government support that result from a variety of internal
and external factors;
the Tuareg rebellions and the return of Tuareg youth from Libya,
and the appearance of Al Qaida in the Sahara desert and its fringe Sahelian zones
to the north and south.
In addition to the more well known challenges of uneven rainfall, desertification from over
grazing, and deforestation, all of which are the most usual accompanying litanies when
discussing transhumant pastoralism, now there is the frightening news that religions radicals
have commandeered whole communities in this region (Mali and Mauretania) and are
establishing kin relations with them, thereby making it possible to secure a relatively safe haven
for further expansion and clandestine operations. On March 12th there was a coup d’etat in
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Mali as soldie s e a e i fla ed at the go e
e t s lack of response to the Tuareg rebellion
in the north, as well as its failure to adequately equip its soldiers posted there. Niger is in a
fragile position as well, since up to 12,000 Tuareg are said to have returned from Libya to Niger
within the last 12 months.
Background
The West African grasslands and Sahel run from the Atlantic Coast to Chad and northern
Cameroun in the east. Some do not consider Cameroun or Chad part of this zone. From Chad,
the Sahel blurs into the central African zones of Darfur and Sudan. The local economies in the
zone are precarious, and depend on the two vacillating poles of government policy and
prevailing climate conditions. In pre-colonial times, much of this region was relatively rich due
to long distance commerce and a much less densely populated agricultural zone. Terence Walz,
i his a ti le Li ya, The T a s-“aha a T ade of Egypt, a d A dallah Al Kahhal,
(2010) describes the
este
-1914,
oute that tied West African Sahel to the Kingdom of Darfur, to
Egypt and points beyond. This route dates back to beyond the 19th century, and at the
beginning of that century important changes took place that moved trade away from southern
Libyan and hence Sahelian, commercial centers. This western Sahel network included such
centers as Katsina and Kano (now situated in current day northern Nigeria), and Walz points out
that it was the Egyptian conquest of Darfur which accelerated the demise of these trade routes.
It is also probable that pressures on the Turks from The British (early 20th century), and the
deplacement of prominent Syrian and other mideastern merchants from western Egyptian
trading centers also contributed to the fairly swift destabilization of these trade routes. But
these routes far outdate the colonial period – we can look back beyond the colonial period to
the era of the Darfur State, the seven Hausa states, or even Kanem Bornu. These regional
characteristics remind us that relations between what are today Niger and Libya not only far
pre-date the colonial period (ie Zinder, Katsina, Kanem and Bornu), but actually operated
actively up until the end of the nineteenth century. In light of this, one is should not be
surprised at magnified relations between Libya and the western Sahel during a period of
economic wealth in Libya.
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The Herders of the Western Sahel
While there have been important population shifts to cities in the zones north and south of the
Sahel belt, such as Tripoli or Kano, there are other important movements of people that should
be factored in. Young nomads of Tuareg or Fulani origin now trace new migration routes back
and forth from cities to nomadic camps. They are usually itinerant wage earners who fund a
f ee o adi life
ith ity i o es. They a ely o
a i als i t ust ith thei
he ds, though they may have a few
o adi fa ilies. A ase i poi t a e the ishumar a o g the
Tuaregs: young people, male and female, sometimes called vagabonds, sometimes called
cosmopolitans. They circulate in sthe Saharo-Sahelian spaces of Libyan, Algerian, Nigerian and
Malian borderlands (Ines Kohl, 2010:449). In my opinion, the collapsed pastoral economies of
the Tuareg are not soley the result of border disputes or weak governments, though, as Kohl
argues. Historically, the Tuareg economy rested squarely on nomad dependence on client
communities further south who provided them with grain and even cow milk, as opposed to
camel milk, in times of need (Hausa-Bouzou; Songhay – Bella). Since the 1950s the risk
management strategies that depended on these sedentary communities have become less and
less tenable. Today there is very little regular economic correspondence between such
communities, except for the use of shared pastures or the occasional loan from one to the
other. It is doubtful that they would ally themselves to the Tuareg project of state creation,
unless under coercion. While a few opportunistic individuals might be attracted to a new
Tamasheq state, few communities could permit themselves such extravagance, and they are
most often no considered Tuareg by the Amazigh, anyway. One is reminded, too, that the
Amazigh have 7 classes.
Wodaabe (Fulani) youth, on the other hand, circulate between small tourist-focused
boutiques in Niamey and family camps in the bush. The Wodaabe youth then engage a rather
more circular pattern of migration where they visit between maternal and paternal relatives,
gauging opportunities for livestock acquisition as well as pasture lands. Some have by-passed
the Maghreb entirely, perhaps judging this zone more rightfully as the territory of hope and
opportunity for Tuareg youth. International music concerts and fairs have created a new north-
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south et o k i
hi h Wodaa e youth ie fo positio a d oppo tu ity to sell Wodaa e
culture to interested Europeans in Italy, France and elsewhere in western Europe
(Lofstdottir:2008).
Nomadic pastoralism is an opportunistic adaption to livestock management in semi-arid
lands. It depends on maximizing the nutrient base of diverse pasture grasses while factoring in
access to water resources for human and animal needs. In fact, this production system is not as
helter-skelter as public opinion would have it: the rich biodiversity of pasture lands, argued by
some to be at least as rich as rainforests in scale and percentages of interdependent plant
species, requires a very specific and continuously updated knowledge of the territories in
question. Further, customary wells dominate this landscape and function as markers for
customary tenure. Finally, this adaption of livestock and human exploitation fades out at each
border to the desert to more specialized communities with other animal specializations and
other production systems. Briefly, in the north of cattle country one finds camel country. The
nomadic Tuareg specialize in camel management and their settlements extend from north
central Mali to eastern Niger. From north central Mali to the Atlantic coast these same regions
are inhabited by the Moors, people of mixed Berber and Arab descent, also specializing in
camels, but in this case they make up the national ethnic majority and are in power. Because
they are in power, they have created policies which favor camel management, and disfavor
local former client communities as well as others.
At the same time, the desertification of this area does not occur in a even north-south
flow, but advances in leap-frog fashion according to wind currents and lack or presence of
vegetation. It is a sort of slow dessication that accelerates when humans are not actively
preserving the ground cover. In fact, no one knows the arid and semi-arid zones of the Sahel as
well as its historic populations, except for those technicians who work with satellite images, of
whom there are many today. Even such technicians are not so well versed in the multiple ways
livestock producers respond to climate fluctuations. This is partly due to subtle demographic
changes and fluctuations that happen on the ground. So far, production specializations have
mitigated against conflict between camel and cattle herders (Tuareg and Fulbe). However, if
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other issues such as land access for state creation, over-running of cattle pastures, or blocking
of commercial centers or routes occurs, we can expect violence and conflict to follow.
In summary, over time, ecological niche specialization has led to specific territorial
adaptions that allow for maximum exploitation of a difficult landscape. This is logic of the social
map of the Sahel, excepting political dynamics and macro-economic influences.
In light of these local dynamics, it is clear that the plans or visions of AQMI (local AlQaeda) are not necessarily the most influential factor in nomadic decision-making today. The
danger that I am more concerned about, then, is the conflagration of several issues with the
problem of AQMI advances in the Sahel and Sahara zone, the international perception of this
zone as a refuge for Islamic terrorism, and the exploitation and confusion of Sahelian youth for
o je ti es that sta d outside of the egio s secure future. The specific problems that I would
identify as contingently related to AQMI progress in the region but not causally related are:
1) Youth unemployment
2) Mineral extraction, low wages, and debates revolving around community/local
control and gain from these resources
3) Encroachment of projects, private ventures, and drifting agricultural communities
onto pastoral ranchlands
4) Return of youth from Libya
5) Failure of governments to provide basic services to communities in the pastoral
zone.
Community Sustainability, Security, and the Future
Ironically, the political situation of the Sahel seems to parallel natural dilemma: the
more poverty-stricken and fragile the communities in this region become, the more likely
targets they become for drug warlords looking for a base to ship to Western Europe, or for AlQaida operatives who seek fall-back positions for activities both north and south. As well, the
greater the increase of illegal immigration from this zone to southern Europe.
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These are compelling reasons to understand the systems of pastoral livestock management that
have for centuries dominated the Sahelian economy. The question of community sustainability
is an immediate challenge that has far reaching implications, both politically and in terms of
local and transnational environments. Weak communities are easy targets.
The unfortunate truth for pastoralists is that contemporary sedentary populations find
them a menace because they are unpredictable and have not been socialized to the routines of
sedentary life. They cross borders, they inhabit lands that are difficult and expensive to access
(cost of gasoline). They present a real challenge in terms of literacy training, and have underdeveloped understandings of the mechanics of the modern state and citizenship. The Tuaregs
remain the most marginalized due to a few factors (French exoticism, old slaving patterns,
historic relations to state building in the Sudan).
Opportunistic pasture management is the best adaption yet known to exploitation of
vast semi-arid pasturelands. (Mirjam E. de Bruijin and Han J. W. M. van Dijk: 1999) It is
threatened, and not working at optimum potential in our era, due to over-exploitation of areas
around wells that no longer are managed by concensus tenure applications, the northward drift
of farmers who are responding to population growth in their communities and in the cities, and
the carving out of conservation zones, national parklands, and hunting concessions. This brings
us to the question of political will, public policy regarding land tenure, and the challenge of
developing well-vetted development strategies that are rooted in local environmental
knowledge and protected by government stakeholders who value the long term view. How can
we support local initiatives to develop strong citizens in the Sahelian zones? What are
sustainable approaches that respect both civil society and the natural resource base upon
which it depends? These key uestio s a e the sa e fo g ee
o ke s a d g ee thi ke s
everywhere. One challenge will be to imagine to what extent we can support local as well as
national efforts at building a better and more secure future. Green strategies for the Sahel can
be effective approaches to neutralizing the effects of interlopers who are looking for a fast turnaround, whether of adherents, mineral income, or other resources. Peace mobilization means
solving sustainability questions. Branding whole communities as terrorists would be a serious
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error that would only lead to escalation. In fact, these communities should be enlisted as allies
since they have everything to lose and very little to gain, besides a few 4 wheel drive cars.
Note:
For example, Since the 1980s various development projects in Niger noted that there was an
incremental creep of agricultural activity towards the north. Responding to urban sprawl, shortened
fallow periods, and the over-use of weak soils for cash crop production, farmers were extending
cultivation activities beyond the isophote (rain level) zones established during French colonialism. Indeed,
before French colonialism such lands were managed through the mechanisms of emirates and sultanates
established by the Hausa-Fulani that needed cattle production for economic reasons and that were
comprised of people who were themselves herders or the children of pastoralists.
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